Mobile as the Key to Relationship Marketing

Patrick Tripp: Welcome to PULSE The Cheetah Product Podcast. I'm Patrick Tripp, SVP of product marketing at Cheetah Digital. Today, excited to be joined by Andy Gladwin, our head of global mobile go- to- market at Cheetah Digital. Andy, how are you today?

Andy Gladwin: I'm good. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you very much for welcome me along today.

Patrick Tripp: Great. It's great to have you and Happy New Year. A lot happening in the market, in mobile space. We're excited to link Andy to hear about your background, your focus at Cheetah Digital. We'll talk a little bit about relationship marketing, and this is really a renewed strategy that a lot of our customers are engaged in, and talk about how mobile is key to that strategy and really some of the product innovations across the customer engagement suite that support that. So a lot to discuss, Andy, and excited to a dig in. Welcome back to PULSE. Andy, great to have you on, I know it's been many months that we've been trying to get you on, so it's glad to finally have a great discussion here.

Andy Gladwin: It's good to be here, finally. Thank you, Patrick.

Patrick Tripp: Thanks Andy. At PULSE, we talk a lot about the product and the innovation in the market and what's resonating. We always start, though with our collective love of music and as a musician and somebody who's dabbles in different areas, would love to hear as well, Andy, from you, what kind of music are you listening to these days in your house?

Andy Gladwin: Wow. I think that there are two questions there: what am I into and what do I listen to?

Patrick Tripp: Right.

Andy Gladwin: So, I'm very much a fan of all types of music, everything from country to house music, but my son has recently developed a love for rock. He's six- years- old and this coupled with his understanding how to use Alexa means that the house he's mainly been listening to Aerosmith, Bon Jovi and Guns& Roses, so it's different to my personal taste, but certainly, what we're hearing mostly in the house at present.

Patrick Tripp: Love it. Love it. Yep. Those'80s rock bands are definitely a part of my background as well. We're all about the Google device in our home and Hey Google, and there's always music playing through the speaker, so very cool. Well, Andy, thanks again. I'd love to maybe start with talking about your background in mobile. I know you've done for over 15 years, a lot of different work in the mobile space. Maybe you can chat about that.

Andy Gladwin: Yeah, thank you. So I joined Ericsson on a graduate scheme about 15 years ago. Thank you for carbon dating me there, and with there held different leadership roles across Ericsson, Salesforce CLX, it then Sinch, and most recently, Vodafone where I was heading up sales for their 250 million euro SMS business before moving on to Cheetah. But my history's very much been in mobile messaging and mobile payments, and that's an environment that's really moved from the" why" mobile to the" how" mobile conversation over the period I've placed a focus on it. It's a very exciting area to specialize in.

Patrick Tripp: Yeah. Fantastic background, some great brands there, and really helping us really establish expertise in our go- to- market as mobile is key to our entire customer engagement strategy. So maybe you could talk a little bit about your focus here at Cheetah Digital and what you've been up to.

Andy Gladwin: Yeah. So my job is really to aid customers in achieving their business and customer engagement goals using our mobile solution, and that's all integrated within Cheetah's CRM. So when I talk about mobile, just be really clear, our primary focus is SMS, MMS, Mobile push, and Line in Japan, and then also mobile wallet, which I think we'll have the opportunity hopefully, to talk a little bit more about later on. But Cheetah seems to be, what we're doing, our solution, our strategy is resonating well. We're seeing it to be agnostic in terms of the verticals that are enjoying these services and getting value from it. Likewise, the region. Testament to that is a recent award we got from Market Outlet for our top mobile marketing solution provider. Our emphasis to double down in mobile was formalized with joining the mobile ecosystem forum, being the first marketing cloud to do so, and also adhering to their code of conduct, which really helps our customers to focus on content and value and impact whilst we've made an emphasis to ensure that we always do things with an eye of compliance, regulation or said best practice to remove some of those hurdles for them.

Patrick Tripp: Absolutely. Yep. So a lot going on here at Cheetah Digital and mobile strategy is key for relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is a way that we're providing a series of use cases for customers to help them progressively mature their marketing practices, everything from simple messaging at scale, which might include mobile and email to cross channel to real time, to real intelligent marketing, and it's really an opportunity for us to help our customers identify the gaps and understand the opportunities that they have that progress their practices, and really underpin everything by a platform which we refer to as a B2C CRM, which is really focused on our marketers and allowing them to have that single view. The customer that can then intelligently decide how to engage across the entire customer life cycle from acquisition to engagement to loyalty. But boy, mobile is really key to that storyline. It really is embedded into a lot of those different phases of the customer life cycle. Maybe Andy, you can talk a little bit about how you see mobile really playing into this concept of relationship marketing.

Andy Gladwin: I think it starts with enrollment and being part of the value chain. Just looking from a customer relationship, people want to have a relationship with their customers. They want to enroll them in programs. They want to be able to consume the value that they offer to consumers. So with that, how do you bring them in? How do you get consent to engage with them, Cheetah mobile plays a great part in this where when looking away from the screen, and that's not necessarily the mobile screen, but on the move where customers are, it spreads the net as to where you can start to provide compelling propositions and doorways and gateways for people to be able to adapt and then enroll in whatever program it might be. So examples of this could be having a QR code on a menu, or a bedside table in a hotel. It could be seen on the side of a football pitch or on a billboard, a short text and hearing it on the radio, hearing it on television, it's working out where are the captive moments that you have a customer's interest and that they may be considering the relevance of your product, your service, that value may be compelling and then creating an environment for them to be able to enroll in that and be served by it. So for me, I feel that mobile not only provides on- the- go, but in terms of providing a frictionless way for customers to be onboarded into to marketing relationships, it's the native and preferred environment for so many customers. So with that, they have less friction in the process to enroll.

Patrick Tripp: Yep. It's all about creating that valid exchange, ensuring that the brand is establishing trust and credibility with consumers with data that we would call zero party data and ensuring that truly highly interesting data for consumers is leveraged. But it goes beyond just that onboarding piece to more real time engagement.

Andy Gladwin: Yeah. So I think there are two things I'd say make the mobile channels quite distinctive. Let's take SMS as an example, because that is 25 years old, I believe, also, and with SMS, it's old, it's not rich, but it's getting double digit year- on- year growth. Why is that? The reason is it holds great power for exactly what you are saying that, the immediacy, the real- time engagement. So firstly, there is greater than 100% mobile penetration rates in many of the markets that we serve, but an increasing number of markets around the world. But when you look at when you send a message and you want to have certainty for something to be read and reacted and responded to within as close as possible and instant moment, 90% of SMS are read within 90 seconds. Generally, those messages are delivered inside of 10 seconds and you see response rates up to 45% where there's a call to action. You see click through is 19% on URLs where you have an SMS that has a URL within it. So all of these things provide in terms of real- time engagement, a great opportunity. Let's put that into a more tangible example. So if you're a bank, banks send out SMS to achieve actual authentication. They send out SMS for fraud loads. In both those instances, these are examples where they need to have the highest assurance that something's going to be delivered. It can be delivered to any customer and it's going to be read and reacted to in as close as possible to real time. This could be for a betting company. Let's send out the odds at half time in the Super Bowl for which team's going to win. That's a finite period of relevance for that message, which is going to expire if it arrives half- an- hour later, or if it's read a day later, whatever it might be. Similarly, for a restaurant ensuring that people show up for reservations, an appointment reminder for any industry. These are examples of trying to go, what is the highest likelihood that something's going to be read by any customer at a real moment in time. With that, companies can be quite forensic as to when they send messages to get feedback and responses and be there in the moments of relevance, which drives much more impact in engagement when we talk about relationship marketing.

Patrick Tripp: Yep. I think relevance and context are such key words when you refer to the real- time discussion, real time, doesn't always mean like within milliseconds, it certainly could be. But sometimes that's creepy and invasive, but certainly, the context and the data that we're capturing really helps guide that follow up. Obviously, mobile is a key mechanism there, but also, as we look across the customer life cycle and at retention strategies and maybe the traditional world of loyalty is starting to turn over and we're starting to see a convergence there with customer engagement. How would you see mobile maybe playing in that area?

Andy Gladwin: Our mobile solution really is interwoven across the customer life cycle, across different parts of our service offering. I think just to go back a step, one of the big differentiators we see for to teach us our ability to break down data silos, and to make that data actionable for people to, as you say, pull it and use it for contextual messaging that's relevant, not creepy, that we've got definitely zero party data and we're able to place personalized communications. Now, that's the data side, but customers also don't reside in silos; they're not static. So when we talk about loyalty, it is really important, in my opinion, to go and say someone may be on a loyalty program, but it doesn't mean necessarily that you can't continue to engage them to push them further towards advocacy, or even just to keep on dipping the litmus paper and to understand where is their relationship at this moment in time, and that can move. So let's take an example where you may be enrolled in an airline loyalty program, but you may be very dissatisfied with the service or you might be enrolled in three other programs. Because you are there in a loyalty program, doesn't mean you're necessarily a loyal customer, or let's take a sports fan. Have they just lost their best player? What's the performance of their team? Do they have a disposable income to go to games? Do they have the time to go to games? What's changed in their life, environment and relationship constantly changes from week to week, month to month, depending on what variable it is. That, to me, is really important when we look at mobile being a great way to look and understand where customers are in their relationship to get feedback, to be able to use that immediacy to find out more in the moments of relevance, where people are willing to exchange more information, and with that to be catering back in a more personal fashion. The other part, which we'll talk more about in a moment is mobile wallets and then creating the right channels and environment that within loyalty, how do we digitize it? How do you make that something that is modern, it's convenient and helps consumers to, not only enroll, but be reminded about value and help to leverage the most out of the programs that they choose to enroll within?

Patrick Tripp: Yep, absolutely. I think a lot of this is pointing to more of a retention marketing strategy where you're trying to identify your best customers and treat them with a real unique experience versus maybe some of the earning and burning and rewards programs that have been dated of the past. But looking into maybe one other theme in relationship marketing, we talked about a little bit at signals or conference that happened recently in the fall was just knowing all that is noble about customers, and this points to that concept of the B2C CRM that I talked about, this platform, a marketing view, and how does mobile contribute to that?

Andy Gladwin: Well, I think from the environmental perspective, it's no secret that they're increasing handcuffs placed on the legacy data assets that companies used to use. So through policy regulation and a more data conscious and secure customer, mobile has been able to provide a unique environment where within the mobile app, excuse me, customers can gain better insights into behaviors and the customers who do have apps, this to me, is such an important where if you can find a compelling reason to create a mobile app for your customers where you have control of that environment, you can observe are people looking at summer holidays, skiing, holidays, family holidays, if you are there and it's a holiday app, but what are the behaviors? What are the categories? What is the relationship are you seeing within this there's someone who's had high frequency and recency? With that, again," We should maybe serve Patrick with our loyalty program," or" We haven't seen Patrick in a while and he used to come to use our app quite frequently, does this now mean that we need to reassess the value and put you in a category that you might be seeing as a churn risk?" So within mobile apps, I feel that where there are other data channels that have had restrictions within them in terms of the assets that used to be there, mobile apps still hold this and can be of great value to enterprises if they can find a compelling reason for convenience or additional content or value for people to take on their app, download it, and then use it for whatever call to action. So for me, there's that within the app as well. You have the ability to have when you're sending messages, action buttons. So rather than just sending a push, send a push with several buttons, and with those, there might be a generic offer. There might be a specific offer and there may be neither of those are offers that I'm interested at this moment in time. So again, just being able to go and say," What did the consumer click on?" can fast route them to value," Okay, this is something I'm interested in. I'm going to click here and be able to take on whatever promotion it might be in a promotion example." But at the same time, we can see that," Did they choose category A, B, or neither A or B?" And with that, take that data and understand in future," We know that Patrick always clicks on a specific offer for kids skiing in the Massachusetts area, whereas, for Andy, he didn't. So next time, we're going to serve him a different promotion or understand that he wasn't interested either promotion. So maybe we look at things to do with customer care, rather than customer sales." All of this is understanding in real time what is it and how do we communicate, but then taking that, and not just how although we're getting this information from the mobile environment, is to be used across all environments, all digital touchpoints. That, to me, is saying mobile can be an asset that can then be used across the total holistic relationship with any customer.

Patrick Tripp: Yep. Truly beyond knowing the customers, showing them that you're knowing them and providing them with value at every given touchpoint. So you've alluded to some of the great capabilities that we have on the platform, but maybe we can talk for a couple of minutes about some of the innovations that you've seen recently from the product organization that are helping push us forward on the mobile front.

Andy Gladwin: Yeah. So the first one I'd like to touch on is rich push. So you can send a traditional push where it's just text, and there's no rich media within it and making a direct comparison. When we send an SMS or an MMS, we see about three times the engagement with an MMS over an SMS. Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words when it comes to making something tangible and making it much more graphic for people to understand what are they consuming and to entice them to do so, if it's something of value. So this could be anything from sending an image of a resort for a holiday. It could be sending a promotion." Here's what the PlayStation you could win looks like" it could be sending a meal that's personalized to dietary and preferences in terms of," Okay, we know that this customer is a vegan and this is their preferred meal, let's send that as to what we're going to have as our restaurant promotion for them," so different ways in which it can be used. But for me, by having an image or a gift, you are able to make things a little bit more engaging than just flat text. So rich push is something that we're making an emphasis on this quarter and excited to be able to serve our customers with it shortly.

Patrick Tripp: Awesome. What else? I know that we have some stuff that really brings us closer to the experiences side of things as well on the mobile side.

Andy Gladwin: Yeah. So there are many companies who use SMS right now for sending out promotions, also for asking for customer feedback. Obviously within Cheetah, we have a fantastic product called Cheetah Experiences where we gain direct zero party data to have that one- to- one relationship between consumer and brand. With this, it's enabled a platform for us to able use it on mobile, whereby, sending a shortened URL that goes to Experiences' landing page, a customer can click on it. Rather than just being a center code for," Here's how to redeem your 20% off online and punch in the code," they click on this and it might be a scratch card to show what the reward is or spin the wheel to win, or providing preferences and showing insights by swipe left swipe right. Just the ability to not only have the experiences to make it much more engaging and interactive, but leveraging the haptics of the mobile phone it should a drive conversion in terms of the number of people who are going to follow through the call to action or redeem promotions, or give insights, but also reduce churn from these programs where they're a little bit more fun than the traditional," Take your text and punch in a website if you want to."

Patrick Tripp: Love it. Yeah. So many interesting ways to really engage with consumers through experiences, really fun, immersive ways that mobile could bring that to life, and even mobile payments as well. Mobile wallet is obviously something we've talked about a while, but we're starting to see a lot of traction there.

Andy Gladwin: Yeah. So let me give you a headline for the research for a company called Boku. They research recently, and they discovered that by 2025, 50% of the global population will be using mobile wallet. Now, it's crazy. In terms of the size of the opportunity that resides here and for marketers, this is incredibly exciting for them to work at how to refine their strategy to be in this environment that's going to have greater, greater prevalence as we go forward. I just take a personal experience of coming back from holiday in Italy, where I was going to the airport. When I got to the airport, I had to have my COVID super green pass. So that was in my mobile wallet, my health information.

Patrick Tripp: Mm- hmm( affirmative).

Andy Gladwin: When I go to the plane, I'm scanning my boarding pass with the plane. I get home, go to a restaurant, I'm about to pay for the bill and see," Oh, here is a coupon promotion that I can redeem within the restaurant." So I then click within that environment before I pay, I get the discount. Then I go to pay on my mobile wallet. These are four transactions in the space of 12 hours where all of this has provided me with convenience. It's also given me insight to value that I may have gone," Oh, I think I might have a promotion somewhere, or let me check my emails, or do I have a slip I got from a magazine," if we go back many years, this is really moved forward. I think that the modern customer has moved from that historic position of taking two months, having plastic cards, to really becoming cardless and contactless where the recent environment has accelerated a lot of this, but this is a change that's here to stay. We're seeing the increased spend limit, the improved security and trust, the touch free transaction. This is the very environment that I see a great opportunity for promotions, coupons event, passes and loyalty cards, and really offer value in an environment ever increasingly used by customers and will continue to be so.

Patrick Tripp: Absolutely. Completely agree, 100%, mobile wallet and mobile payments, something that I am taking advantage of quite a bit. I think the whole world is seeing that in the current state that we're in is really a forcing function to really adopt that. So a lot of great innovation here. You talked about rich push. Why talked about mobile experiences and then mobile wallet. Andy, it's always great to chat with you. Folks, if you want to learn more about what Andy's been working on, as well as our approach at mobile for Cheetah Digital, you can go under our use cases tab on cheetahdigital. com. There's a whole mobile section there. We'll also have some blogs and other material from Andy, but Andy, always a pleasure. Thank you again for attending and we'll talk soon.

Andy Gladwin: Perfect. Thank you very much, Patrick. Sure.

Patrick Tripp: Thank you.